Should whale hunting be banned?

Sean Midgley 11SC

B2 – Should whale hunting be banned?

The whale hunting, formally known as whaling, argument has been going on for many years now. The task I have been set to do is to investigate both sides of the argument “Should whale hunting be banned?” In this coursework I will be giving facts about whales, the population of whales, historical facts and arguments for and against whaling. Also I will be giving my opinion on this argument, however first I must look at both sides of the argument before I make my final decision.

History

Whaling began in the prehistoric time and was initially confined to coastal waters; this affected the traditions of cultures in countries such as Norway and Japan. The development of whaling technology was spurred in the 19th century as an increasing number of people wanted whale oil. The members of the IWC voted in 1982 to apply a moratorium on commercial whaling beginning in the 1985-86 season. Most countries around the world accepted the moratorium and stopped commercial whaling. Some of the countries who declined the moratorium are Norway, Japan and Canada. Japan and Canada declined this because in some rural areas of the countries food supply is low, so it would have a social impact if it was banned. It will also have an economical effect as people require whale hunting to provide a wage. IWCoffice.org

Argument Against

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Argument Against

One argument by Wikipedia against whaling is the safety of eating the whale meat. It is known that some species of whale contain pollutants such as PCB’s, mercury and dioxins. This can dangerously harm humans and cause cell mutations. However Wikipedia cannot always be trusted as it can be edited by anyone, so the information may be bias or inaccurate. Wikipedia.com/whaling. There is a table by SeaWorld that has given us the estimated population before whaling and the current population, which is shown in item 1. In item 2 there is a chart to show the depletion of the whale population. For example, the fin whale, before commercial whaling had started there was a decent 650,000 of them, now there is but 123,000. This shows that commercial whaling has a great impact on the whale population, and if we continue the whale population will not have a chance to increase again. SeaWorld are dedicated to sea life, this making the information based not only on a factual basis but on an emotion basis. This could lead to inaccurate results. SeaWorld.org.

Argument For

Klaus Barthelmess from luna.po.to has counterarguments for arguments against whaling. He says we cannot say the whales are becoming extinct as there are more than 75 different types of whales and not one of them has become fully extinct. People say that killing whales are destroying their social and family bonds, but Klaus comes back with “That’s correct. But this applies to all sorts of animals that are been hunted and killed.” People also say that whaling cannot be controlled, however this is not true as Norway have implemented a scheme in which inspectors search every whaling vessel. Also in some cases inspectors have been replaced with “black boxes” which registers GPS location, engine effort, steering commands, harpoon cannon shots and the weight of each whaled hauled on board. Luna.pos.to. The website “Visitandlearn.co.uk” say that some whale populations are recovering and these are the whales whalers want to hunt and they say that modern techniques of whaling hunt these species with damaging the ecosystem and the whale’s position at the top of the food chain. Also they say that the method of killing the animals provide a quick and less cruel death to the animals. Visitandlearn.co.uk

Conclusion

My conclusion to whale hunting is that commercial whaling should be banned. However in rural parts of the world food supply is low, and by banning whale hunting there would have a great social and economical impact to their society and cause many problems. Whales do not reproduce as fast as other animals; they only have one baby every 2 – 3 years, this not allowing the population to rise quickly. Hunting whales should be used for cetacean and sea life research, as we do not know a lot about it. They way that whales are killed could be called inhumane. As they shoot the whales with an explosive harpoon, that can injure the whale greatly and it can take up to 2 hours for the whale to die. We do not depend on whale meat to live, as we have farm animals such as pigs and cows that provide plenty of food, and we should stay at that point in eating animals. My conclusion comes from SeaWorld. This is because they are a dedicated to sea life, and I am intrested in sea life and they support sea life research. The most reliable source is Visit and Learn because they are not a bias source and there information is accurate. The most unreliable source is Wikipedia. This is because anyone can edit it, and the people who edited it may have bias opinions, leading the information to be inaccurate.

Bibliography

OCR Handout stimulus

Peer Reviews

Here's what a star student thought of this essay

skatealexia

27th of Aug 2012

Quality of writing

Minor grammatical errors seen in quite a few places. Punctuation and spelling fine. Tone is conversational in places which is inappropriate as a scientific essay should be non biased and factual apart from in the conclusion.

Level of analysis

The introduction is done well. The candidate outlines what they are going to talk about and how they are going to analyse the data they research. The history of whaling is provided succinctly and the candidate sets up why there are problems with completely banning whaling. Their sources are quoted in red, but they should really use a neater bibliography and referencing style to avoid interrupting the essay. Although they do provide a bibliography at the end which is good to see. Their arguments for and against are strong in places, but very weak in others and not backed up very well by the candidates reasoning. They try to analyse their sources as they go along but this should be done on a separate page because it makes the essay look untidy and would allow the candidate to develop their reasoning further.

Response to question

The candidate answers the question better focusing on the disadvantages of whaling. Some of their arguments for advantages are quite weak. This should be addressed and other points considered that would make their research and presentation of it a bit more rounded.

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